Customer Reviews

The Wrong Man [VHS]

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Just rented it and had to watch it three times. An amazing film! Where's the DVD version! This simple grim tale a man wrongly imprisoned for robbery and the heart-breaking subsequent mental breakdown of his wife will haunt you. I would argue that this film demonstrates Hitchcock's films in its purest form. No bird attacks or shriveled corpses here but then some of us who love Hitchcock's works believe they are really in the end about people and how they survive, or come to be trapped by, dire circumstances. Watch this movie along with "Vertigo," "Psycho," "The Birds," and "Marnie." Like "Psycho" and "The Birds," we see both physical and psychological imprisonment of the characters (or being caught in a kind of trap might be the relevant metaphor here) and like "Vertigo" and "Marnie," we see the overwhelming power of mental disturbance have on one's ability to control one's own life. I have found that it always helps to compare Hitchcock's films with each other as certain themes seem to occur over and over again, almost as if Hitchcock had some compusive fixation on it.

I would consider this film a great tragedy.

This is definitely not your typical Hitchcock. Based on a real life case of mistaken identity, we really see the cinematic magic that happens when a captivating story is told by a director with uncanny instinct and depicted by actors with tremendous scope and talent.

Fonda just blew me away with his portrayal of Manny Balestrero, a New York City club musician wrongfully accused of armed robbery. His pithy and grounded performance really gave this film a realistic and poignant feel. You feel a sympathy towards his character as he is churned through the justice system, gutted out physically and emotionally, and ultimately ends up in jail.

Vera Miles' portrayal of his wife Rose was a departure from what Hitchcock fans would expect...this is NOT the goody-goody gutsy sister of Janet Leigh in "Psycho". Vera Miles performance is startling. We see her character descend into mental instability as she places the blame of Manny's incarceration on herself.

The cinematography, of course, is excellent. Here is where Hitchcock makes his signature on an otherwise laid-out story. The backdrop of NYC lends its own gritty feel. All in all, this is a wonderfully rich film. It is an excellent contrast to Hitchcock's more sophisticated, glossy films like Vertigo and Rear Window, and the acting is simply superb.

A must for any Hitchcock fan.

Apparently the innocent man has plenty to fear, and that is the subject of this curious film by Alfred Hitchcock. Although the theme of false accusation is one that Hitchcock would use repeatedly throughout his career, THE WRONG MAN is a different kind of a Hitchcock film in many ways.

This film claims to be--and in fact is--a true story (it was based upon a 1952 LIFE magazine article "The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero") and Hitchcock went to great lengths in minimizing the fictionalization of any part of this narrative. The result is quite a serious film. Henry Fonda plays Manny Balestrero, a devoted family man who plays bass at night for local nightclub band. Based on faulty eyewitness identification, he is accused of committing a string of armed hold-ups that have been plaguing his neighborhood.

Now, in the usual Hitchcock film, the hero of the story would go on the lam, meet up with a beautiful blonde, and set about solving the mystery and clearing his own name. That does not happen here. We follow Balestrero through the tedious but very real process of being accused, processed, and jailed while his wife Rose (Vera Miles) slowly suffers a complete mental breakdown. So serious is this film, in fact, that Hitchcock forgoes his usual cameo role and instead appears during a prologue to the film explaining the film's basis in fact.

THE WRONG MAN has a documentary feel to it reflecting the considerable efforts by Hitchcock to be true to the real story. In many cases, in fact, the picture was filmed in the actual locations where the true to life events took place, including The Stork Club in Manhattan, the police precinct house in Queens, and the actual insurance office where one of the original armed robberies took place. Hitchcock even filmed in the psychiatric ward where Rose Balestrero was committed with the real doctors playing themselves!

THE WRONG MAN is not an exciting film and it lacks the usual humor of a Hitchcock outing, but it was never intended to be exciting or funny. This film is pure drama and realism, and one gets the feeling that this film was made because Hitchcock felt that it was immensely important to make. Still, Hitchcock had his reservations about his results. He once stated "it's possible I was too concerned with veracity to take sufficient dramatic license." Nevertheless, THE WRONG MAN is a remarkable film in the catalogue of realism and should not be missed.

Jeremy W. Forstadt

Fans of Alfred Hitchcock's more popular films like Vertigo, Rear Window and North By Northwest may be at first a bit put-off by the serious nature of this film. To be sure, the film is well-directed and generates some real tension. But that suspense comes not from breath-taking chases or fabulous set pieces, but from the investment the viewer puts into the characters.

I admit I'm a huge fan of the Hitchcock colloborations with James Stewart, so I wasn't sure how well I would like Henry Fonda. But he is excellent as Manny...very believable and sympathetic. Even more impressive is Vera Miles as Manny's wife, who goes from adoring partner to a closed shell of psychosis by the film's end. In fact, I for one forgave the script's last-act change of focus (from Manny to his wife) because I was so caught up in Miles' performance. In all of Hitchcock's impressive body of work, only Vertigo has a more downbeat resolution.

Although it's certainly not as technically brilliant as many of the director's better-known works, THE WRONG MAN is worth seeing for the excellent casting, and the fact that it's really unlike any other Hitchcock film.

Alfred Hitchcock again shows his mastery of the art of film making. "The Wrong Man" is done in a true documentary style..and Henry Fonda is so perfect he is scary.

With Fonda's superb low key style you will find he isnt acting at all.. he IS Manny Balestrero !. Fonda's inner rage is completely under control..and one wonders if it will ever explode..this fact sets up the tense drama to a breaking point.

The emotional breaking point is visited on his wife played by Vera Miles. The films plot has overtones of another film called " Call Northside 777" with the Police on one side and the rest of the characters on the other.

One of a kind film experience !
CP

"The Wrong Man" was written by playwright Maxwell Anderson and directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the true story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, a man wrongly accused of a series of armed robberies in New York City in 1953, only a couple of years before the film was made. "Manny" Balestrero (Henry Fonda) was a family man and a musician at New York's Stork Club. One day he visits the office of his life insurance company to find out how much his wife Rose (Vera Miles) can borrow against her insurance policy to finance some badly needed dental surgery. The insurance company has been held up a couple of times by a man claiming to have a gun, and the teller is convinced that Manny looks like the culprit. Charged with armed robbery and misidentified by witnesses, Manny hopes to find people to corroborate his alibis. When that fails, the situation takes a toll on Rose's mental state.

"The Wrong Man"'s primary objective is to give the impression of a loss of control. The most disturbing aspect of Manny's predicament is that he is at the mercy of an impersonal system that doesn't know or care about him and from which he cannot escape. Manny is an easy-going guy who is bewildered by the unjust turn of events but always optimistic. His wife Rose is less naïve and more proactive at first, but more emotionally fragile, ultimately tormented by feelings of guilt and persecution. Manny's helplessness and distress are expressed graphically in his scenes of confinement in the jail. Alfred Hitchcock excels at communicating the horror of being caged, though I could have done without the camera moving in circles. That conveyed a feeling of nausea more than confinement. "The Wrong Man" has some nice scenes of New York City circa 1956, including some filmed inside the Stork Club. The style of cinematography vacillates between documentary-like realism and more stylized Hitchcockian camera work.

The DVD (Warner Brothers 2004): "Guilt Trip: Hitchcock and The Wrong Man" (20 minutes) is part commentary and part making-of documentary featuring interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, film historians Robert Osborne and Richard Schickel, the film's art director Paul Sylbert, and Christopher Husted, the manager of composer Bernard Herrmann's estate. They talk about the film's themes and the cast. Sylbert recalls filming and technical details. And Husted talks about the film's score. There is also a theatrical trailer (2 ½ min). Subtitles are available in English and French. Dubbing is available in French.

THE WRONG MAN was an excellent film. I'll say that I had my doubts before I viewed the film cause I did have doubts. But, boy! was I suprised. henry fonda and Vera Miles are excellent in there roles! I liked this film because it was powerful and showed the scary side of being wrongfully accused. I recommend such film as NORTH BY NORTHWEST, STAGE FRIGHT and any other Hitch film if you like this one. A must see for anyone who wants a good drama, suspense, or just an all out good movie!

The master of suspense creates one of his most brooding portraits of the human spirit. Henry Fonda plays Manny Balestrero an upstanding musician, husband, and father who doesn't drink and who wants to do nothing more than support his family. Vera Miles plays his wife Rose who needs to see a dentist, but the family is low on money. So, on January 14th the day that would change Manny's life forever, he decides to go to the bank to see on how much they can borrow on his wife's insurance plan, but he is recognized by all the workers at the bank. He is recognized instantly to be a bank robber who stole over 70 dollars from this particularly bank. Manny is left helpless as all the evidence points to him committing the crime even though he says he's innocent as do believe as well. Fonda has little dialogue after he goes to prison, and the viewer truly gets a sense of what it's like to be a prisoner. Hitchcock who narrates the beginning prologue uses lighting like he has never done before. The movie is lit with some extreme low lighting even from a suspense picture. It effectively creates an eerie darkness that creeps into nearly every scene achieving a sense of uneasiness for the audience. He positions the camera up high, zooms in or out, and does other diverse shots in the film that we are not used to seeing from Hitchcock. The film is well-paced and well acted; Fonda does a fantastic job as the man who thinks he has been wrongly accused of robbery. Miles is also great when she becomes more self-destructive as her state of mind becomes worrisome is questioned and troubles Fonda after he is arrested. "The Wrong Man" is an overlooked gem from the director who knows how to put the audience on the edge of their seat.

"The Wrong Man" (1936) is unique in its semi-documentary/film noir approach to a real life New York case. Henry Fonda is Manny Balestrero, a struggling musician who is wrongfully accused of being a robber when he attempts to cash in his wife, Rose's (Vera Miles) insurance policy. The trail of accusations leads to a meticulous examination of police procedure in which the pressure of labeling the victim and hunting down the accused eventually culminate in desperation and a complete - if coerced - confession. Hitchcock's own ingrained fear of authority and the law is the real star of this rather mundane and not terribly prepossessing melodrama.

Warner's DVD transfer is fairly accurate. A very nicely balanced gray scale with deep, solid blacks and reasonably clean whites is impressively mastered. Dirt, scratches and other age related artifacts are present but do not terribly distract. There's a hint of edge enhancement, some pixelization and a bit of shimmering in fine details but none of these terribly distract. The audio is mono but very nicely cleaned up. A brief but comprehensive featurette with Hitchcock historians is a nice companion piece to the film.

The only film Hitchcock ever made based on real-life events is a must-have for the avid Hitch fan like myself. The opening intro sets the eerie mood for the story of a wrong man accused of hold-ups. Henry Fonda stands out in the title role, being his only collaboration with the Master. The twists and turns that he endures seem too chilling to have actually happened but they did as the film brilliantly presents. Bernard Herrmann's score adds to the atmosphere of another man's guilt trying to conquer the innocence of another man. This is another genuine hit from THE Master of Suspense.